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Comment by User23 | Hacker News Reader

The US military is one of the few American employers that can legally use an IQ test as part of their hiring process.

They have to. It is illegal to hire people in the bottom 10% of IQ to be in the military.

Surely most employers use IQ which varying degrees of effectiveness?

I expect in most settings IQ 100-140 is very hard to guess from an interaction. Harder if there is a specific field being assessed where someone has experience/training.

But everyone will pick up IQ <90 almost immediately and that's not even necessarily abnormally low just borderline.

By proxy, yes, but not directly and there's a big difference.

I'm not sure there is.

IQ is just an aptitude score, it's far more objective and unbiased than an interview.

I think you're not understanding. Direct IQ tests for employment are illegal in the US.

Which means it goes to subjective interviews where racism is known to be a factor.

Why have an objective test for what you want when you can introduce subjectivity and racism for the same goal? It's the American way.

But IQ tests are also racist which is why they're illegal for most employers. What legal non-racist policy do you have in mind?

IQ tests aren't racist lol they aren't sapient. How could a piece of paper be racist.

No they're not.

De facto they are, mostly[1]. The corollary that there exist jobs where intelligence isn't pertinent is perhaps somewhat baffling to common sense, but then the law often is.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.

Huge tech companies have used the Wonderlic IQ test as recently as the last 10 years. Somebody here, if this thread isn't moribund, can chime in to say which; I'm not saying. There's a meme that IQ tests are a powerful hiring tool that have been suppressed by political correctness or gunshy HR departments, but the real reason they're not ubiquitous is that they're not fit for purpose.

More accurately, you can simply adapt the IQ test overall and end up with a "situational judgement test". Which is better.

Ultimately that can be used to accurately predict an IQ test, and vice versa.

Same with MCAT, or any other "aptitude" test.

Doesn't really make a difference either way. Companies just use some other aptitude test instead

You can use it to by hiring veterans.

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